English

At St. Peter's we want all children to develop a love of language for language sake.

We aim to develop our children’s ability to use spoken and written language to communicate effectively – to listen, speak, read and write both in and for a wide range of contexts, purpose and audiences.  We want our children to read and write fluently with confidence in any and every subject, by the time they are ready to move to secondary school.  We want our children to love reading, to acquire a wide vocabulary and to want to read for themselves.  See Reading for Pleasure for more information.  

St. Peter’s approach to reading begins with the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds programme.  Systematic synthetic phonics is taught daily in Reception, Year 1 and into Year 2.  Pupils use their phonic knowledge to learn to read, write and spell following a set programme which introduces new letters and sounds.  This provides the foundation for progress in reading across the school.  See Phonics and Spelling for information.  

In Key Stage 2, the children undertake whole class reading sessions with the teachers in their class.  Whole class reading is where each class will read and complete scaffolded tasks as a class based on their class text.  Quality texts are chosen, which aim to challenge the children to develop high-order comprehension skills, generate discussion and lead to independent reflections.  During these session classes will focus on a number of areas including: pre-teaching of vocabulary; whole class discussions; VIPERS (Vocabulary, Inference, Predication, Explanations, Retrieval & Sequence or Summarise); and comprehension tasks. 

For some children, systematic synthetic phonics sessions continue into Key Stage 2.  At times, it is also appropriate for some children to take part in more structured supported guided reading sessions with an adult. 

To support the teaching of reading and writing, key texts have been mapped out across the school and where appropriate, these link to other areas of the curriculum.  The 'Book Spines' for each class for this term can be downloaded below.  A wide range of challenging vocabulary is embedded across our curriculum.  Teachers also explore new words at every opportunity during the school day. 

Attachments

• book spine cycle 2 robin download_for_offline
  download_for_offlinebook spine cycle 2 robin
• book spine cycle 2 swallow download_for_offline
  download_for_offlinebook spine cycle 2 swallow
• book spine cycle B cuckoo download_for_offline
  download_for_offlinebook spine cycle B cuckoo
• book spine cycle B greenfinch download_for_offline
  download_for_offlinebook spine cycle B greenfinch